Patch 4.0.6 Release Date?
A lot of people have been asking me for a release date, and to be honest at this point I'm not really sure I have one. The last 2 PTR builds (13561 and 13580) were both flagged as Release Candidate but the last one isn't even deployed on PTRs.

Also, someone did something funny with the official blog and put up a Patch 4.0.6 Official Notes [PLACEHOLDER] post as a test, it would be logical to see Patch 4.0.6 on live realms next week after that but with an undeployed PTR Build in my hands I'm not really going to confirm anything before Monday, and personally I wouldn't be surprised if it happened the week after.

Patch 4.0.6 - PTR Notes Update

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker)

PvPTol Barad

Attacking forces will receive a 200% capture speed bonus when they control 2 keeps.

Defending forces will receive a 200% capture speed bonus when they control all 3 keeps.

Daily quest creatures, herbs, minerals, etc. will only spawn when Tol Barad is in the quest phase between battles. There will be 5-minute and 1-minute warnings before the quest phase ends. The quest phase ends 15 minutes before the battle for Tol Barad begins and queuing is made available. At that time any players in the daily micro dungeons will be ported just outside. This does not apply to Tol Barad Peninsula or the daily quests there.

Strength of Soul now occurs when the priest casts Inner Focus on oneself, rather than Power Word: Shield. In addition, Strength of Soul now also causes the priest to become immune to silence, interrupt, and dispel effects for 2/4 seconds after using Inner Focus.

ProfessionsFishing

Rare fishing poles now have a chance to be found in the Bag of Fishing Treasures earned via the Stormwind and Orgrimmar Fishing daily quests.

Jewelcrafting

Wrath of the Lich King purple, green, and orange gems have been increased in cost to match red, blue, and yellow epic gems (220 Justice Points). Burning Crusade epic gems have been increased in cost to match the most expensive Wrath of the Lich King gems.

Items

Item Sets

Normal PvE helms (item level 359) no longer have a chance to drop from Nefarian or Cho'gall on Heroic difficulty. Instead, the Heroic PvE helm and shoulder pieces (item level 372) only require their associated Crown/Shoulders of the Forlorn tokens to purchase, and do not require players to obtain the normal helms or shoulders first.

Nefarian World 2nd kill by MethodMethod killed Nefarian a few hours ago and is the 2nd guild in the world to take down the big black dragon. It's also the world first kill since the hotfix preventing class stacking but technically, that wasn't an exploit, so I'll just let people debate endlessly about it in comments. Congratulations to them!

Statement from MethodNefarian down, putting us at 13/13 (finally a breath of fresh air!!!). Thumbs up for the dedication shown by our raiding team.

The current heroic difficulty of raiding is both enjoyable and demanding. We can all welcome, with open arms, the more challenging raid content, but the sheer quantity of content available since Cataclysm launch has required more time investment than ever before to remain competitive. Personally I would have welcomed a 'reasonable' gate-system or similar to allow for more real life time the past ~2months, especially with xmas/new years/exams etc. Taking a few day breaks over the festive period only to be notified that other guilds were currently raiding obviously wasn't ideal!

This tier of raiding has unfortunately contained multiple bugs, with bosses like Atramedes, Sinestra, and Nefarian standing out. Sinestra had some notable issues for us; having infinite lines at Twilight orbs making progress prior to this current reset difficult. Twilight Flames properly spawning at the Egg locations in phase 1 was also fixed recently on the fight (can see they are non existent @ Paragon's video). The issues on Nefarian are of more concern, with Blizzard seemingly overlooking certain class abilities on a key encounter mechanic. Unsure as to why it was waited with until after a guild had killed Nefarian before applying the fix, especially with "top guilds" apparently under surveillance, such delayed fixes are harmful to the 'PvE race'.

Hoping that Blizzard can keep up with the quality of heroic raid difficulty while considering the quantity available and as always more vigorous encounter testing/monitoring.

/Sco

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Dalaran/Shattrath Portals
Portals existed to give people access back to capital cities to reach auction houses and class trainers. Auction houses and class trainers were kept in the old world capitals because we knew that if we didn't require people to go back the old world would be a ghost town.

Those portals had a few fun side effects like letting people warp all around the world toot-sweet at the shake of a nose to do anything they felt like. This was not the intent of the portals and regardless if people enjoyed being able to zip around, it is not the intent of our travel as it exists now to allow them to do so.

Now that the old world capitals are the major hubs in the current expansion, the expansion zones are in Azeroth which keeps more people around, and we've decided to add trainers and auction houses to Shattrath and Dalaran to aid in the leveling experience, the portals no longer serve their original purpose and were removed.

[...] We have no plans to implement the old portals back in the game, but thank you for you reasons as to why they should. They've been noted. (Source)

Blizzard Art Gallery Update

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker)

The World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Art Gallery has been updated with five pieces representing the Warcraft universe. Make your way through the gallery to take a glimpse into the process behind bringing Blizzard games to life, and the artistry those games have inspired.

The high res version of the Kil'Jaeden artwork is a 17280 x 10368 image (16mb!), you can probably make an awesome poster out of it.

Before the comments explode, it's a joke. They're all using Potion of Illusion to mock Paragon.

It's unfortunate that Paragon's kill of Sinestra was an unfinished version (missing the Twilight Flames) and that Paragon's kill of Nefarian had a literally fight-breaking bug in it (Feral Druid's Rip stacking), but I don't blame Paragon for either of those (mainly the first).

Also, Method's kill of Al'Akir was post-nerf, and Paragon's kill of Al'Akir was pre-nerf (and only very barely pre-nerf).

All in all, it's clear who the top guilds in the world are, grats to both.

I'm pleased they won't bring back the Dal/Shatt ports, but I do wish they'd add the new-zone ports to another major city- Darn and Undercity for instance - to help spread the playerbase out a bit more. it helps prevent cities like SW and Org from being lag fests (which they are occasionally for me.)

Like that they are still working on making Tol Barad actually balanced, although I doubt it helps too much. >.>
I mean, it doesn't exactly stop the defenders squatting on 1 keep the whole time. It's pretty difficult to break them sometimes.

Also, love the kill pic. Hilarious stuff.

I once had a character named "Clamslam" but Blizzard deemed it inappropriate.

Control occurs once you reach the 75%/80% mark. This just helps it fill up to 100% faster, which is kind of meh.

It mayyyy actually make it not contest if equal numbers of attackers and defenders collide due to the defenders having a higher capture rate... that would be "interesting".

This is what I'm wondering to. I know the bar moves a tad if you have an advantage number wise, but if we (as attackers) had 2/3 and zerged the 3rd keep with somewhat even numbers compared to the defenders there, would we actually gaining control?

I once had a character named "Clamslam" but Blizzard deemed it inappropriate.